Walk Around My Vegetable Garden

A walk around my edible garden

(October 2012)

Onions share space in a pot with bulbs

I was not in the mood for working on a new recipe for today as all of my focus at the moment (when I have a minute) is on the garden.I am focused on preparing it to deliver an incredible harvest over the summer months. Yesterday afternoon I wandered around and took some pictures for you to see what is happening in my garden at the moment.

I have planted a variety of seeds that I am waiting to transplant into my garden beds. The image above shows zucchini, tomato varieties and beetroot seedlings.

Spring sunshine has doubled the size of my lettuce in the last few days

Mr Fresh made me a nice compost bin

Mr Fresh made me this compost bin in less than half an hour on the weekend. I love having a handy hubby! I did have to wait a year an a half for it though….. One of my gorgeous readers helped me out with some valuable composting tips earlier in the year, you can read those here.

The black tiered unit in the foreground is our worm farm. For tips on setting up a worm farm you can read my post here.

Potatoes are growing like crazy!

The potatoes I planted into the old tractor tyre have had an amazing growth spurt over the last few weeks. I am hoping the taller they get the more potatoes….

Re-invigorated herb patch

The herb patch is coming to life again, the lemongrass, sage, chives, chilli, and horseradish are bouncing back to life. The thyme, rosemary, parsley and oregano have been going strong all winter, and continue to do so. The garlic plants is progressing well. I have some coriander seedlings in the seed trays and will plant basil and tarragon soon.

Onions, leeks, artichoke and rocket

Two of my garden beds are full of glorious rocket. I adore it, and I have loads of it. The picture above also shows an artichoke and the leeks and onions planted in winter.

Pumpkins and tomatoes

The pumpkin seeds I planted are sitting surrounded by egg shells to deter the snails. They ate two of the plants so I added the shells and then the birds came and wiped out another few plants….The whole area is now covered in shells and netted.

The pumpkins are planted in a new productive area that I have created between two of my raised beds. I will use the space over Spring and Summer. Mr Fresh was none too pleased when I dug up the grass to do this as he thinks it looks “ugly”. I have been allowed to keep it on the condition that he can come up with a “permanent solution” over Winter. I have just finished digging up the other side as well so I can plant some corn, more tomatoes and maybe those zucchini seedlings will go there too.

Penny and Toffee the backyard chooks

We finally have two beautifully happy and friendly chickens who were laying a dozen eggs a week – Until in the last week the eggs stopped.

We got our chickens at the end of last year, you can read about it here. I took what seemed like ages until they started laying eggs recently.

We started with three chickens, one turned out to be a rooster so we returned it to the farm, and sadly, one died. That left Penny (pictured) and a crazy amount of mayhem and mishaps that I will leave until another day.

All in all, I am really happy with the progress of the garden this year and am crossing my fingers for a glorious array of fresh beautiful vegetables (and eggs) to cook with across Summer and into Autumn.

How is your garden shaping up? I would love to hear about it. Tell me if you have been out in the garden the last couple of weeks as well.

Now to the winner of the 16 blocks of Lindt chocolate …..I was supposed to send Lindt the 3 best entries to select a winner. I had so much trouble narrowing down the list that I sent them five! One of my favorite entries was from Stan for Chocolate Chantilly – I am very excited to now know how I can make the equivalent of a mousse without using cream (I am lactose intolerant so avoid cream). Thank you to everyone for your drool worthy ideas and for participating.

The winner, as judged by Lindt, is Nic – Congratulations Nic on your haul of gorgeous Lindt chocolate ! Thank you to everyone who entered. There is an email in your in box Nic to organise your special delivery.

Hi Jodie,
I got one egg yesterday and none today. I think the birds that have been trying to steal their grain are freaking them out. We got some plastic snakes yesterday and put one on top of the pen and one at the door. Hopefully that deters the birds and the girls get back to laying again. K

Yah for you Nic. So pleased that you got selected as the winner, well done. I have been mounding with straw and sugar cane but was thinking of adding some compost too so will give it a go on the weekend. Have a piece of choc for me and enjoy it!Thanks for entering. Kyrstie

I love looking around other gardens and yours looks wonderful. Thank you for sharing. I’m jealous of your seedlings, I struggle with raising things from seed although I have a few coming along now. Penny looks gorgeous, a lovely shape and colour. My composting tip is to freeze the citrus skins and then they will break down in the compost.

We are very lucky Christina. When we moved here a couple of years ago the backyard had nothing in it except a lemon and feijoa tree. We kept those and the rest was a blank canvas. I have fun dreaming up things to do out there 🙂